Quotes from Steven C. Hayes

Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life.

If we are afraid of being rejected by others, we see signs of imminent rejection everywhere. We know that buying into that fear will not liberate us, but the possibility of rejection is so fear-inducing that it seems like a violation of basic logic not to focus on it.

The problem is that we are not trained to discriminate when the mind is useful and when it is not, and we have not developed the skills to shift out of a fused problem-solving mode of mind into a descriptively engaged mode of mind.

You cannot be a good ACT therapist if you take words to be right, correct, and true rather than asking "How effectual are they?

People whose cognitions fuse are likely to ignore direct experience and become relatively oblivious to environmental influences.

Gedachten zijn als lenzen waardoor we naar onze wereld kijken.

The problem with problem solving is that it is a mode of mind that does not know when to stop.

The constructive alternative to fusion is defusion, and the preferred alternative to experiential avoidance is acceptance.

These skills involve consciously experiencing feelings as feelings, thoughts as thoughts, memories as memories, and so on.

The classic self-problem seen in clinical settings is fusion with the content of verbal self-knowledge—such as "I am depressed" where "depressed" has the quality of a personal identity. This aspect of self—the conceptualized self—can be "positive" or "negative" or both, but its most dominant features are that it is rigid, evaluative, and evocative.

We can have a large impact on the prevention and amelioration of abuse, drug problems, violence, mental health problems, and dysfunction in families.

Conscious content now is known in the context of a consistent locus or point of view that can integrate that knowledge. Infantile amnesia begins to drop away. Events are held in memory in a verbal temporal order. A conscious person shows up—not as the object of reflection but as a perspective from which knowing can occur.

To what extent does the client live in a world of "musts" and "shoulds" and "can'ts"? To what extent does the client live in a world of well-rehearsed excuses for why things are as they are—a world in which change is either impossible or for a time other than right now?

It is based on a pragmatic philosophy of science called functional contextualism

Het is niet eenvoudig contact te krijgen met het leven dat je wenst en te leren hoe je je dromen in het heden kunt verwezenlijken, omdat het menselijke verstand de ene na de andere val laat dichtklappen en de ene na de andere hindernis opwerpt

Once there is a verbally stated goal, however, we can assess the degree to which analytic practices help us achieve it. This option allows successful working toward a goal to function as a useful guide for science.

The fields of psychology and psychiatry have also inadvertently contributed to the problem. Ideas that are not evidence-based proliferate, such as Freud's Oedipus complex (you are sexually attracted to your parents, which creates a hidden conflict, giving rise to anxiety), while evidence-based ones lie dormant.

All printed forms and tools in this book are readily downloadable

Compassion and acceptance; stigma and defusion. As described thus far, acceptance and defusion seem, superficially, to be intrapsychic issues, but self-as-context expands their nature. Because perspective taking is social, it is not possible to take a loving, open, accepting, and active perspective on yourself without doing likewise for others.

In ACT, values are freely chosen, verbally constructed consequences of ongoing, dynamic, evolving patterns of activity, which establish predominant reinforcers for that activity that are intrinsic in engagement in the valued behavioral pattern itself

Is there something you hope will happen by telling me that thought?").

Psychological flexibility can be defined as contacting the present moment as a conscious human being, fully and without needless defense—as it is and not as what it says it is—and persisting with or changing a behavior in the service of chosen values.

When we've adopted behavior because we think it helps us avoid emotional pain, whether we're aware of that thinking or not, change is challenging.

I want you to think of the most empowering relationship in your life. This should be a relationship with someone who lifted you up, who somehow carried you forward. It could be with a spouse or a sibling; a lover or a friend; a teacher or a coach; a priest, rabbi, or minister; a parent or guardian—it could be anyone.